Old Friends
9:20 a.m. - 2003-06-29


When Beany was here last Sunday, she got bored after awhile, since the computer was kaput, and I handed her a copy of The Time Garden. She was immediately captivated, of course, and I let her take it home with her. Jane thanked me, saying she has been trying to encourage summer reading, so I wrote her out a list of my favorite books for children. This got me to thinking that as time goes by, my favorite authors seem to disappear from the shelves of the library as they become unhip, so maybe I better try to buy up copies for myself, to have a little library I can read over and over again through life.

I now have copies of some of Edward Eager, several of The Moffats, some Elizabeth Enright, but should really get them all, while I have the chance. I don't have Half Magic, for instance. I would also like to have copies of all Dorothy Stevenson novels. I am thinking that when the parent gets older, it is hard to think of gifts to get them that they really like, so this could be easy for the offspring, what with Amazon et al.

The last few days have been hard, with the scorching heat, and I think I was starting to feel it a bit, but he came to the rescue and decided to take the three of us on a drive to the coast. We had to go to Sebastopol to see a client of his - they are renovating a steam-driven sawmill that has been in their family since the 20's and were giving demonstrations yesterday. I thought it would be boring, but was fascinating. We headed to the coast, but detoured down Freezeout Road to see the old cabin. Duncan Mills was beautiful that day, cool and lovely, but the new owner has built a high wall all around the cabin so you can't see it at all. At least three or four cabins on the road are for sale. After that, we drove to Bodega Bay where it was overcast from the fog. We drove by the church from The Birds, and a wedding party was just coming out. Quite a contrast, but of course, I had to make bird squawking noises as we drove by, but don't worry, the windows were rolled up.

On the way home we saw something hilarious. As we drove down the highway toward the Benicia exit, we came alongside a pack of Hell's Angels. I told him to drive carefully, no sense ticking them off. Right then, the whole pack turned off at the next exit, except for the two lead guys. I said "Hey look, those guys missed the exit!" and the second guy looked back at his vanished comrades in alarm. He sped up until he was next to the leader, and they leaned their heads together to talk, the second guy pointing back at the exit. Second guy veered off at the next exit, leaving the leader to look back. The leader kept on going, all alone now. I guess he did not want to admit an error. My spouse was really laughing at all this.

Last night it actually got down into the 50's, so I went out and did the grocery shopping at 7:30 this morning. He and Ab went into his office to clean it up because he is getting shuffled up to a bigger office. So I am alone (lovely) and I think I will cook. I am going to fry up some ground beef and turkey and freeze it up, put on some lentil soup with a smoked ham hock I found in the freezer, and make some spinach/ricotta, artichoke heart calzones from Rachel Ray's book. Those are for the pot luck at work tomorrow for the Big Lady Boss's birthday. They said it is a significant birthday, so she must be turning 50, not that you would know it.

He has spent the weekend decapitating a poor apricot tree that was declining. He dug up the stump this morning. It was sad, that poor tree never had a chance in life, overshadowed as it was by the pine tree, and as soon as the pine tree goes, the apricot now has sufficient sun, but gets a disease and starts dying. He says he is going to plant an orange tree there, which will be terrific, except we have not had much luck with citrus. Maybe this time it will work.

Time to go, my garlic cloves are calling me...